Epiphany
by Orokid
Summary: During a potions class in sixth year, Hermione becomes the victim to things that most try to avoid- an epiphany of a lifetime. Take the ending for what you will, but I, the author, am an avid Pumpkin Pie supporter. Hope it's enjoyable!


_**Orokid:**_** Oddly, this is the first time I've written something for a while, and it's a shipping I asked myself to give up on after the seventh book came out. But, like usual, I cannot give it up due to stubbornness and a good imagination. It's something that is against my personal politics, and I say 'BLAH!' to the people that wished to force me to conform to society's demands.**

**Moving on from my thoughts about flipping the bird to stupid people…**

**I'm glad that I can actually write anything nowadays. My writer's block has been something that I've had to deal with since my last update, and I've been forced to try other things to get it to start again. Things, I may say, include starting a few webcomics of my own and working at my forty-hour-a-week job, not to mention school does become an issue every so often. Nonetheless, I have things to keep me busy.**

**And I give a hearty thanks to ZerothChild from for helping me get through my writer's block for this moment in time. I really appreciate it.**

_**Disclaimer: **_**I have no ownership claims toward anything that has to do with this story, to tell the truth. Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling, an author I admire and hate at the same time. And the storyline to this story came from a challenge I took up for fun at Portkey from ZerothChild. So… basically, all I own is the phrasing, although I doubt that it's much of an ownership at all… T-T**

**Anyway… hope it's somewhat enjoyable!! **

_**Epiphany**_

It hadn't seemed like much more than a purely innocent day, Hermione mused silently to herself as she sat alone in the girl's lavatory, fiddling absentmindedly with her curly cinnamon colored hair. Nothing, she thought, had given her a hint or clue to where the day might lead, and so she had been most confident that it probably would've been an okay day. Yet…

As things so happen, that day was by far the least normal of days that she had gotten to be a part of between fights with Voldemort and his legions of Death Eaters. In fact, it was probably the furthermost thing from it.

And it had all started in potions class.

_They had clambered in like minstrels at a dirge, dragging their feet toward yet another class in which students would be forced to learn things. Or, at the very least, most of them did. Her closest friends seemed to see it as the same, carrying their baggage with the strength of their shoulders and heaving sighs with each step they took toward where their schedule had appointed them._

_To tell the truth, she was probably one of the very few people whom did not look at the class as a reason to look forward to lunch. Instead, she tended to see class as a reason to find what she was meant to do outside of these halls once NEWTS testing and Voldemort were done with._

_Because, back home, it didn't seem as though she fit in anymore._

_Muggle duties, she had found throughout her numerous times home, seemed to bore her, as well as muggle literature and sport. With her returns to Hogwarts frequent as they were, due to schooling there and the such, she often had to resist temptation not to seem overtly joyful at the thought of returning whenever her parents pulled up to the station in their comfortable convertible car that she felt as though she had grown up in._

_A part of her hoped that she really wasn't the only one that took sorcery so seriously, finding much about it fascinating and worth knowing. Then again, even if no one did, her friends needed her help and guidance to learn things whenever they were off and about in their journeys._

_A grim reminder of the path that laid ahead them thwarted her thoughts, and she did her best to shake them off as she pleasantly seated herself near the front of the room- the closest she could get the boys to sit without getting the usual moans and groans about not wanting to be perceived as brainy. As Ron tended to say, they needed to "keep up appearances"- something she founded herself rolling her eyes at each time he tried to use it in defense._

_Ron was, surprisingly, the first to seat himself down beside her, slouching and mumbling about things she hoped had to do with quidditch. In all technicalities, she desperately didn't want to know where Slughorn could stick his cauldron and potions book. But, then again, it was coming from the young man beside her, and she knew she should be used to his behavior by then due to their long relationship as friends and comrades. Never before could he silence his lips from saying what he thought, even if that meant getting himself in trouble in the process._

_He turned to her, offering a slight awkward smile, and she could read the helplessness in his eyes. Once more, he wanted to be saved from the plight of school, of fourteen inch long essays and the never ending battle he shared with books in general- and he wanted her to do the saving. If anything, the boy never grew out of the man that he was becoming._

_The only thing he got was a slight apologetic smile back, although the only thing she knew she was apologizing for was that she really didn't mean it. Once in his life, she hoped that he might learn to grow up and take responsibility as it was handed to him._

_She heard the other side of their table creek, and she turned her eyes to look at the male that had seated himself on the opposite side of her. His demeanor was much different than the red head that was on her left, and she watched without words as he stared up at the front of the room without so much as a peep from him. His emerald orbs blazed from behind those dark wire-frames, and she read them carefully as he kept his gaze away from hers._

_And, what she saw, tended to hurt her more than any mortal wound she had ever received._

_So many emotions swirled within the very center of his fresh water oceans, and she tried not to bring his attention as she read from the corner of her own, trying to make it seem as though she was paying more consideration to the board up front than to him. So much sadness was wrapped up inside of him… and so much anger was resonating from it… There was so little innocence left in him that she could find, and she wished desperately that… that-_

"_Now, class, I have an announcement to make."_

_The amused voice of their potions teacher called out, and she turned her eyes forward for the first time since gazing at the young man that was her closest and most trusted friend. How embarrassing would it have been if he hadn't called out to the class? Would she have stayed glued to his eyes, watching him like a hawk does its prey? She didn't know, but that didn't mean that she didn't do her best to ignore the fact that she was clueless about the answers._

_The plump, older gentleman stood at the front of his class, wearing what she assumed were one of his best scholarly uniforms, and a small flicker of laughter moved through her as she remembered Gilderoy Lockhart and his own sense of style. Another soft laugh caught her eyes halfway through her own, and she turned her eyes to look into the ones she had studied just a moment or so before._

_And he was looking directly at her, a slight sense of humor dancing within those green pyres within his eyes. She merely grinned back at him, glad that, for once after for so long, he could be happy about something that had little to nothing to do with Sirius or his memories of the happier times._

_Before long, both seemed preoccupied with Slughorn standing in the front, waiting patiently for his class to pay complete and total attention to him. Glad that it seemed to have been so, he continued on with the lecture that he had so obviously planned to get along with for the day. "Now, class…" He directed the eyes of the students toward a piece of cloth that had been thrown over something, using his wand to point it out to those in the back. With a simple jerk of his hand, the material had been thrown off to some part behind the desk in which was being used, and the man took a stand behind the steaming cauldron of what seemed to be a mixture of color amongst yellow, orange and red. "Looking at this potion before me now, does anyone know what it is?"_

_Hermione gasped as she caught sight of it, raising her hand without a second thought in her mind, having remembered from several books at _'Flourish and Blots'_ about a sunrise-esque concoction, and she brimmed with delight._

"_No one?"_

_For some reason unbeknownst to her, her hand went ignored, and the teacher returned to his lesson as if no one had answered at all. Had there been a reason behind this? Usually, he would call on her wisdom, mostly due to the fact that none other in the class would know the answer in which he required._

_Horror passed through her as she let her hand fall to her lap once more, although she did her best not to show it. Had Slughorn started using the same dis-favoritism in her for the fact that she was the only one who knew? She prayed that it wasn't true, although she knew that it would be her own doing if her hypothesis was right._

"_Yes, yes- It's called, non-uniformly of course, an epiphany potion, and is often used by the Ministry of Law to help witnesses remember facts in which they had forgotten or ignored at a crime scene or the sort. On a side note, this is rarely used, and I'll explain why in a moment." He smiled softly, staring at both she and Harry with eyes that she felt bore through her with an acknowledgement that she didn't understand. Had he been accusing them of something? Or… what?_

_She didn't know, and it somewhat scared her beyond belief to find the answer._

_His gaze moved about the class, as if determining something that none of them seemed to have an idea what he was thinking about. "This potion, might I tell you, is quite harder than the felix felicis, and it requires much more patience than anything else you might try to make. Much of the time, it might seem quite impossible to create due to the strength of each ingredient, and, if not made correctly, could burn your insides until there was nothing left to be saved." He gave a pregnant pause before continuing. "Be warned on that aspect, whenever you make one- if you ever do."_

_Silence seemed to echo within the dungeon, and each student waited impatiently for their professor to speak once more, not sure if they should give their opinions on the matter. He stopped before the front desks, a chipper grin upon his plump face, and held his arms behind his back expectantly. Hermione felt as though she could taste the fear that lingered in the air as he opened his mouth to say those magic words that many seemed to fear right then._

"_Now… who wants to give this one a trial run?"_

_Once more, having seemingly been the only one to have read the affects of the potion itself, Hermione raised her hand to volunteer herself for the act. Others did afterwards, although not as positive as she seemed to be on whether they wished to test something that their own professor deemed deadly in the worst of cases. Then again, not many had as much as an unfailing trust in their teachers as she did, and oftentimes, she was rewarded for it._

"_Miss Hermione Granger, if you will." He smiled broadly at her, and she could tell that her stock amongst the other students was rising by that gleam in his eyes alone. Nonetheless, she didn't care if it did or not (even if others like Ron thought it did) - she was going to test her luck and see just how the potion worked._

_Carefully, she raised herself from her seat and made with way other, being careful so not to incite random bouts of clumsiness that Luna Lovegood had shared with her earlier that week. Once to the front of the room, she stood beside where Slughorn now stood, gazing down at the concoction with wary yet excited eyes. In moments, she was served a glass of water, although there had been a small dosage served within it causing it to look more like tap water than anything else. She looked at it with careful eyes, determining whether it was safe to drink or not, finding that her never failing trust was dwindling as she looked at the drink within her grasp._

_Slughorn turned to the class, hands once more behind him. "Now… if you would. And be sure not to stop drinking it until it's more or less gone."_

_Slowly, she raised the glass to her lips, and she heard within the back of her mind the soft and unsteady breath of someone she knew all too well. Tipping the glass upward, the water moved into her mouth, and she began the process in which she had been chosen to perform._

"_As you can see, Miss Granger is drinking what the wizarding world determines as a diluted form of the original", she heard him say to the other students, continuing to slowly drink down what now seemed never ending. "Nonetheless, diluted or not, the effects often have the same occurrence, and the Ministry often uses this form rather than the other because this is the safer end of the source." The drink began to grow warm, and, while panic drove through her very being like a hammer, she didn't stop what she had been asked to do. "At most, Miss Granger might receive a burning sensation in her chest, and she might gain a slight fever, but, after a few hours, both should be gone from her system- if there at all." Her face flushed, her heart raced, and she felt as though she wanted nothing more than to stop drowning as she did in the liquid that had been handed to her. She had to get through this was all that she kept telling herself. She had to find out just what she herself needed to realize that she hadn't yet, if there wasn't something._

_And, as the last drop slipped down through her lips, thoughts began to form within her mind. They were muddled, thrown together to form sentences that would make grammar teachers shudder in horror. Carefully, she set her cup down._

'_**I'm in love with Harry.'**_

_The thought rang out clearly, almost like a gunshot, and she almost felt as though someone had been talking to her. Her feet jumped slightly, and she did her best to regain composure, thinking that the thought had been random and one of the thoughts that made little to no sense in the real world. How could she be in love with him to begin with? He was… He was her best friend, and-_

'_**I'm in love with Harry Potter.'**_

_The repeat seemed to clear it up, although she seemed most frantic to cover it up with hopeful lies and quick thinking. There was no way in Hell that she might be in love with him, and being so would make her one of his many fan girls. She was most definitely not one of his rabid fan girls that might attack him randomly so just to touch him once in their lifetimes. She was his best friend and best friends most certainly never fall for best friends!_

'_**I am in love with Harry James Potter.'**_

_Slowly, and guiltily, her eyes rose to meet the concerned emerald gaze of whom she now found herself thinking of with a different light, and her face flushed with embarrassment and raw, jumbled nerves. His jaw was set somewhat off from where it usually was when he was focusing or frustrated, and he was giving her that look he usually only gave her whenever she seemed worried about something or another. His uncombed hair ruffled in the slight breeze that had somehow made its way down the stairs from the corridors a level or so up. His eyes sparkled with fear for her and no one else, and she knew that he was only watching her with every moment that would slip by between them._

_Oh God. Oh Merlin. Oh… whoever was willing to listen!_

"_Miss Granger?" She snapped from gazing into Harry's eyes, looking frightened as she looked at the professor. The man's voice had been calm, kind, and there might have been a bit of sincerity in there as well if she hadn't known he wasn't using her much like everyone else. Once seeing her attention return, she received that smile that made her wary of him each time they would meet. "Well… Did the potion work?"_

_At a loss for words for the first time in her life, she merely nodded, offering only such a dumbfounded answer for something she wasn't quite sure she was willing to accept herself. Silence from the class surrounded her, and she wished to whatever higher power out there that someone might speak up and not ask her what she had found herself terrified over._

_Hopefully, she might be happy to have received half of her request._

_Slughorn gave that sickeningly sweet smile- the one he always seemed to wear whenever it seemed as though he might be getting something out of the deal. "Might we inquire what your epiphany was?"_

"_I, uh, um- I, uh-" Should she tell the truth? If she said anything to him or the class, she would be seen as the laughing stock of the entire sixth year, having confessed her heart to someone she had been friends with for years on end. Without stop, the words continued to repeat in her mind like a broken record, endlessly recycling the words in her head, and she wished that it would do nothing except stop torturing her with the knowledge that she had once thought to have wanted._

_Her face redder than what she assumed it had ever been before, she gave a quick bow toward the teacher. "I- I- I- I'm sorry!" Before she knew it, her feet had led her out the door and up the stairs, climbing them as fast as she could muster._

And, technically, that was how she had ended up in the vacated girl's bathroom, holed up in one of the stalls on the floor, catching her breath as quick as she could while learning about the newly discovered information with determination. All she knew was that she couldn't go out there without finding a way not to show it on her face, for him not to see it in her eyes whenever they were to talk about his girl troubles. He didn't need to see her heart break when he would ask her about this or that girl, or how he might be able to smooth things over with what's-her-name whenever they might have a fight.

Harry didn't need to see her like she was now, frightened of falling for him and so scared of being without him.

A knock sounded on the stall door, although she ignored it as best as she could, knowing just who it was. The girlish part of her started to show, and it became harder and harder to hard how afraid she really was of the situation she had found herself in, and how terrified she was that he wouldn't love her as much as she now knew she felt about him. It was like living a nightmare- only she was living it as a reality instead.

The gentle knock she had heard interrupted her thoughts once more, this time more forceful than the time before. It meant business. Or, to her, it seemed to. It was more than obvious that he wanted nothing than to know answers to some unasked questions. He wanted to hear things in which she wasn't so sure she wanted to speak of.

At the very least, he would want to know just a hint of what might've been bothering her. That seemed to be the sort of guy he was, no matter how endearing or annoying it might've seemed at that exact moment.

"What do you want, Harry?" She was started by how emotional her voice sounded, although she tried to seem as though she wasn't, despite the fact that a tall wooden door separated their features from one another. Then again, after so many years with one another, they would find it hard not to know each other's face expressions without having to see them, having memorized every furrow and crease over time.

"What do I want?" The question sounded incredulous when it came from him, as if it was amazing that she had the gall to ask him such a thing. She mused silently to herself at the look her must bare at that moment, although she mentally hit herself for thinking that he looked absolutely adorable whenever he gave her that hopeless look. "I want to know what's wrong, that's what." She dared not say or think anything about that, other than the fact that she had known his ambition from the start. "You've never run out from class before. Whatever that bloody potion made you realize must've gotten to you. And badly."

Why in the world was he so smart all of a sudden?

Softly, in a tone that she rarely had ever heard him use, she heard the Boy-Who-Live plead with her, "What's going on, Hermione?"

Her tears threatened to fall from the desperation that she had heard, knowing how worried he must've been to have followed her, knowing just how hard it must've been to see her react in such a way. As quickly as she could, she brushed them away before they would make their descent, not wanting him to even get the idea of her in such of fashion. If he did see her like that… She didn't know what she would do. It had been such a very long time since she had allowed herself to shed a tear before her friends for something of the sort.

Curled up on the floor of the stall, a terrified hand reached up and carefully undid the lock, and she allowed the door to creak open with such a slow swing that she felt she had seen her life time pass before her very eyes.

Standing there with sweat on his brow and concern in those green havens she had found remorse and pleasure in, their eyes connected. He looked exhausted, and she supposed by his manner of dress and present perspiration that it had been from possibly looking for her through the halls and floors. Nonetheless, she saw a worry in his eyes that caused her eyes to leak the tears in which she had been trying to hard to not show. He kneeled down before her, reaching out a tentative hand to softly touch the skin of her cheek with the tips of her quidditch worn fingertips, using his thumb to lightly brush away the slow streams that made their way down her face.

He was so kind… so gentle… so beautiful… And he was still her best friend, no matter how she might look at the situation. There was in no way she could tell him the truth, no way she could say her feelings that she herself was learning how to deal with. How could she expect him to accept them if she was having trouble with doing the same?

"I… I… Harry, I…" She fought for the words, hoping to find a lie in which she could tell him to hide behind like other girls did in this sort of situation. There wasn't a way to tell him. There just wasn't. And she couldn't force herself to say things that seemed to be stashed away so deeply within that it was hard for her to enhance her understanding of it. "I-"

Without warning, she launched herself onto him, burying her face within his strong and purely Harry-scented neck, grasping onto his body as though it were the last thing she was to ever hold onto again. His body was tense, and she knew that it had been because of her actions- quick and surprising to him- that caused him to feel as awkward as his movements tended to be right then. Yet, as his arms had finally wrapped about her shoulders, trying to comfort her to the best of his ability, the words had slipped out from her lips, the truth wanting so desperately to be shared after being stored away and overlooked for so many years.

"I love you." They had seemed so fragile, so soft, and yet she knew how they alone had caused a disturbance that not many things could. His hands had paused, and she could tell that he wasn't sure how to handle such things. "I love you, Harry." She could imagine why. "I love you." But her mouth was on autopilot, repeating the phrase time and time again, each time louder than the last, until she was yelling it into the crook of his neck, tears drenching his cloak, using her fists to enunciate her words the more boisterous she became. "I love you! I love you!! I LOVE YOU!" Slowly but surely, she began to calm, mentioning it every so often with each sob that made its way through her.

Time passed them by, and she was sure that the class in which she had fled from had been gone and done with, their next class well underway. She was calm for the most part, still holding him and never wanting to let him go. Her emotionally exhausted body weakened her hold, although it didn't seem as though the dark haired friend had decided to make a break for it while he could. In fact, it seemed quite the opposite, having his fingers lace itself through her hair, petting it in a soothing motion he hoped would work, continuing to hold her body against his with what strength he still held within his body.

Gently, he leaned over to her ear, his lips just missing the skin of it as he did so. Her heart ached within her chest, loving and detesting the way that he felt against her, wanting nothing more than to run and hide while needed to stay close to him as she was. Her heart raced mournfully as his breath brushed by, and she tried to hold on to her shattering heart so that it didn't break.

"I love you too."

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_**Orokid:**_** Well? Was it half as good as I'm hoping? Considering my plight and all, of course.**

**Anyway, just to make sure this is a bit understandable, I know that I rushed it a little at the end, considering the fact that it was three in the morning- meaning I was four hours short of staying up for an entire day's length. Something I'd only done in my childhood due to painful ear infections and the such. So… since I'd gotten used to sleeping in my teenage years (and more sleeping in my adulthood) it's hard for me to do something like that. Nonetheless, I'm glad it turned out the way it did.**

**Besides that, thanks for everything, and please comment!! **


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